18 August 2010
News stories that echo concerns expressed in The Windup Girl
After reading The Windup Girl earlier this year, I became hyper-aware of stories related to crops and genetic engineering.
- (28 Apr 2009) From Seeds of Suicide to Seeds of Hope: Why Are Indian Farmers Committing Suicide and How Can We Stop This Tragedy? [ via Reddit ] - Indian farmers start using Monsanto seeds and get locked into the need to purchase them instead of relying on seed from their crops. According to the article, Monsantos seeds (though not terminator seeds) have
non-renewable traits.
- (8 Mar 2010) Protecting the Global Food Chain from On Point - The author of the book The Viking in the Wheat Field talks about the debt humanity owes the scientists who protect and enhance the world's seed banks.
- (23 Mar 2010) MRSA: The Drug-Resistant 'Superbug' That Won't Die from Fresh Air - Antibiotic-resistant staph infections on the rise.
- (17 May 2010) Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds - Avoiding the forced dependency on multinationals (a la Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine thesis).
- (7 Jun 2010) Superweeds Threaten U.S. Farms from On Point - Round-up-ready seeds create round-up-resistant weeds. Round-up-ready seeds are those modified to be resistant to round-up and therefore can survive being sprayed while the weeds can't. To add insult to etc., farmers have abandoned the tillers needed for weeding because round-up had obviated the need for them. Now they have neither round-up nor tillers and are going broke(r) paying for day laborers to weed manually.
- (6 Aug 2010) Genetically Modified Canola 'Escapes' Farm Fields [ via Slashdot ] - If we can't control the boundary of GM crops, we can't mitigate unexpected environmental complications (think kudzu X 100). Coming from Slashdot, the discussion slid into the absurdity that a corporation can patent DNA.
[ posted by sstrader on
18 August 2010 at 10:10:08 PM in Environmentalism
| tagged the windup girl ]
- InsideClimate News and Exxon posted by sstrader on 4 November 2015 at 6:32:33 AM
- Just to point out the connection posted by sstrader on 31 August 2012 at 9:51:10 PM
- News stories that echo concerns expressed in The Windup Girl posted by sstrader on 18 August 2010 at 10:10:08 PM
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